Message retrieval systems are well known in the art. Generally, in such systems, subscribers are provided with a voice mailbox into which non-subscribers or other subscribers can deliver voice messages for the mailbox subscriber, which can be retrieved by that subscriber at his or her convenience at any later time. Such message retrieval systems are expanding world-wide, allowing both messages to be originated and retrieved from any place in the world having access to a telephone. A useful piece of information usually provided to the subscriber with each retrieved voice message is the time at which the message was inputed into the system by the originator. This information may be critical to the subscriber to determine what action and when that action needs to be taken after listening to the message.
In smaller, more localized message retrieval systems, the message repository, the subscriber, and the message originator are likely to be located in the same time zone or separated by at most one or two time zones. Thus, the time reported to the subscriber for a retrieved message that is based on the time standard at the message repository, or the time standard of the subscriber's home location, or some other time standard, such as Eastern Standard Time (EST), may be sufficiently informative to the subscriber. In a world-wide system, however, in which messages could be both originated and retrieved from different ones of the twenty-four possible time zones, and in which the message repository could exist anywhere, associating a time with each message that has real meaning to the subscriber is difficult. Since automatic number identification (ANI) information that provides the calling party's number, and from that an identifiable location, is not always available from either the originator when the message is left or from the subscriber when retrieving the message, the system would be unable to associate a time with the message other than the local time at the message repository or a time based on an assumed location of the subscriber.